Bits and blobs

So, apparently people still read my blog (Yes, I am surprised!) even though I abandoned it for half a year and I got a request to share the five minute sketch I made of the cakes I submitted for the Mother's day themed cake competition.

Um yeah, it isn't much really and it does actually look as if it was sketched in five minutes and I don't even want to talk about the ball of fluff AKA pink flowers, which didn't even turn out pink! I should probably work on my cake drawing skills!

If you've noticed I did tweak the cakes a little here and there, okay tweaked them A LOT!

I redesigned a couple of tiers from 28 (That's the cake with gumpaste flowers and basket weave.), removed on of the pink flower tiers because I was a little too lazy to make another and I redesigned the roundish flower arrangement topper into an elongated arrangement and again it was because I was a little too lazy to make more flowers!

As for 27 (The little stout prize winning cake with piped details) I did toggle with the designs a little, they were all suppose to be done in a very henna inspired way, I left the styrofoams as is, I planned on slicing them in half to make shorter tiers but I don't have a styrofoam cutter and it does get pretty messy and I also changed the overall shape of my cake a little because I wasn't able to get the sizes I needed, bleh.

My sketches aren't ever set in stone and I make changes when ever I can to get things done faster and easier because I am a really, really lazy person!
I always write down the techniques that kind of go together so at just glance I would be able to know what I have to work with and trust me it makes life a lot simpler!

If you saw my little "What-to-bring" list on the to right corner.. Well, I had completely forgotten about the fact that I had to bring my Wilton course certificates till after I loaded the cakes into the car on the morning of the competition!

Yep, so I ran around the house like a headless chicken trying to find the pale yellow file which I kept all my certificates in and.. To this day it remains mysteriously hidden, coordinates unknown.
I don't even know why it was stated that you would have to bring your certificates along when you don't even have to show it to them or anything, well I didn't have to do so at least.
Maybe I've got a special VIP pass typa thing,yippee!

I guess that is about all I can say about the whole sketching/planning affair and I bet you are now very disappointed at the fact that I am actually this extremely lazy and careless person that makes terrible sketches of cakes and that I don't even know why I make sketches when I don't follow half of it!

Yesterday was probably one of the most productive days I have had in awhile!

I actually spring cleaned my cake room and for the record, I haven't done it in a very, very long time! 

Eh, I'm guessing cleaning isn't exactly one of my strongest points.

My mini caking library was dusted, drawers were emptied and scrubbed, a truck load of cutters and plungers were washed and categorized and my tools were placed into my upgraded purple toolbox on wheels! 

Yeah, I stole this off the Wilton website because my camera is dead and I haven't a clue where the charger is.

Speaking of my new Wilton rolling tool caddy, I am frankly quite disappointed because the drawers just slide out if you tilt it to the front and just how am I supposed to travel the world and teach with this thing exactly, there should have been a little clasp to hold the drawers in place but I guess drawers falling out isn't as bad as the clasp of my handheld toolbox breaking and my tools and piping tips being scattered EVERYWHERE.

I guess it works fine otherwise (Yes, it just stores tools like any other tool box around.) and you get to show off what a huge, purple, wheelie toolbox you have!

Back to the topic of spring cleaning, right after I was done I simply just stood back and stared at the more or less squeaky clean room and.. Started yanking all my tools out from my toolbox to recreate some flowers I found in the garden in gumpaste.

Um yeah, the caking room is once again, in a horrendous mess!

Oh and here's a nice short story.

We, as in my brothers, mother goose and her fluffy little gosling decided to go swimming in the sea once the sun was down, there was a really beautiful rainbow that stretched across the lagoon and we were playing a game of swim-tag..
Soon it got really dark and I felt something soft and jelly like brush against the back of my palm and a millisecond later I felt the most excruciating pain ever, imagine someone spilling acid on you then roasting your hand over a bonfire.

Mmyeh, I got stung by a jellyfish last night, huh.

-Karen Cuppy Cake

Happiness is pastel pink

It's been some time. Okay, a lot of time since the last time I've blogged and it makes me wonder why I am typing away on this pretty much abandoned blog that happens to be drowning in a truck load of weird comments.

I guess it is partly because I somehow really need to get stuff out of my head and that I don't enjoy being on Facebook as much anymore because I feel out of place and unwanted, if that is even possible.

So yeah, I guess this is my not so secret hideout that I crawl into whenever I feel small, tiny and out of place and type loads of short drafts out.

And I am also coated in flour and breadcrumbs, but that doesn't really matter.

I also have no idea why I joined another ICCA cake competition when they don't really seem to get me anywhere and this year I have to only use Wilton method techniques, trust me they aren't very impressive but I am pretty glad I decided to give cake decorating a second chance because I don't think I enjoy doing anything more and nothing else seems to delight me as much as when I am working on a cake.

I have decided that I should probably get started on writing a "Malaysian inspired piping/stringwork and flowers in gumpaste" book which I have been procrastinating for a couple of years already.

Oh right, what gave me the jump start was this successful-people-speaking-for-the-middle aged-but-still-unsuccessful seminar at the Mines which I happen to randomly stumble upon going, well it's a pretty long story.

The speaker for the day was some oldish but coolish guy that wrote "Publish your book and grow rich" and he was an amazing speaker, well as compared to this old, well dressed guy that could be Nigel Thornberry's twin brother who spoke about property liens and buying property in the US.

Yeah, so he was such an amazing speaker that he convinced me to actually go ahead with the whole writing and publishing a book idea and I am also going for his three day writing boot camp in June, yippee!

I was also dressed in pink from hair tips to tank top to neon pink skinnies to toenails, with uncombed hair, jingly bangles and dirty flipflops, I stuck out like a sore thorn amongst the sea of grumpy middle aged people dressed in black suits and had perfectly styled hair and shiny shoes, so I guess I had gotten a fair share of glares but there were some really nice people that I discussed book plans with and had no clue what "Sugar artistry" was.

I actually enjoy attending seminars now, huh.

Okay, back to the present. 

I entered two entries in this year's cake competition since I could only use Wilton method techniques and the techniques are extremely simple. No, I am not bragging or anything, they are actually meant for total beginners. Like myself when I was eleven.

 My planning started two weeks before the competition, I basically flipped through my Wilton 1-4 course books to have an overview of the techniques I could use and started sketching.
I gave myself a day to complete it but I ended up finishing in under five minutes and spent the rest of the day reading The mortal instruments.
Which is pretty hilarious since the judges were like "OH MY GOD YOU REALLY SPENT LOADS OF TIME PLANNING AND THINKING HOW TO KNOCK US OVER WITH OVER WILTON-NESS" and I was just dying of laughter inside.

Since I had two entries this year I decided to have a gumpaste technique cake and the other a piped technique cake.

There honestly isn't much to say about the cake itself since it had to be in the Mother's day category and I wasn't allowed to incorporate any other techniques in!

All I did was read and then regurgitate, effortless.

For the base of cake 28 I was much inspired by Ron Ben-Israel, I have always loved him since day 1 and I've always wanted to have a whole tier just filled with flowers!

No matter how simple and un-dusted the flowers are they would still look good if you put loads of them together.

I did two tiers of piped basket weave for this cake because I just thought baskets go really well with floral arrangements, the whole Mother's day theme and.. They are really simple, pretty and they fill up space very well!

This tier is probably everyone's favorite, maybe because it's a little different and everything is white.

Inspiration from my latest Keith Kee bridal couture fashion show popped into my head whilst I was sketching this cake out and I just decided to incorporate a little bit of a lace inspired look to it and I think it turned out very well and it made hideous plunger flowers look extremely detailed and interesting.

And as for the cake topper all I did was bunch all my leftover flowers together and stick it on top.
Now wasn't that easy but I did have a little bit of trouble since it stormed for days with no end in Port Dickson so my gumpaste flowers drooped and I had to redo them twice or so and that wasn't exactly fun.

Moving on to cake 27! (I really should have named them, now they sound like prisoners.)

Holding a piping bag to me is as natural as how you would hold cutlery for example so I completed this in two pretty lazy days, I even had time to dig the world's biggest hole according to Fai, Han and Ean at the beach and go swimming afterwards.

I incorporated little fabric like touches to this cake as well because they added that little feminine touch to the cake and that it tends to cover up any ugly patches you have on your cake really well!

I didn't really change the color scheme here much and left everything in the colors you would find them in your Wilton course books.

Oh right, speaking of colors I fell in love with the copper gel paste from Americolor which I received in a goodie bag from the 2011 cake competiton, I hadn't used it till now and boy, is it beautiful!

Literally all the tiers had a little copper mixed into the fondant covering and the trimmings and borders were light and darker tones of copper.

I had an absolutely wondrous time creating my two entries in my little cake room with the weird music I listen to blaring from my headphones as I kind of did this dancing-singing-air guitar solo-head banging-squeezing icing with a wide grin spread from ear to ear thing throughout the week. I honestly hadn't felt so alive in a while.

As I was scrolling through the pictures that my Mom and the very blur ones that my Dad took I found a picture of Alan and Rosalind commenting on my cake while I was dying of laughter inside. 

Well, apparently a little laughter managed to escape.

I should really work on my poker face.

Anyways, the comments I had gotten on my cakes were mainly compliments such as how the pastel color scheme suited the Mother's day theme very well, how extremely Wilton my entries were as some of the other cakes had bits of other techniques on it and how much they loved the flowers, piping and all that jazz but they did comment on how they didn't really like all that wires on the bottom tier of 28 and that my bead border of 27 should have been finer.

Later that day I was tagged in a picture of my cake and it happened to have a little "Highly commendable" sign next to it and I was distraught!
I thought that either one of my entries would have gotten at least placing this time but I guess I was wrong and the next morning I didn't even feel like going back to the event but I am pretty glad I did because the placings weren't out yet. Silly me, I nearly had a heart attack and I guess all that made me realize what a sore loser I am.

I stumbled upon a picture of Alan Dunn and I during his flower course that was held after the cake competition in 2011 while looking for a file that I may not even have downloaded and um, I seemed to have grown younger looking. What.

There wasn't much going on throughout the day unfortunately, so I managed to walk around a little, read at the Time bookstore and catch up with old WMI (Wilton Method Instructor) buddies, course mates and Nina!
I've probably blogged about her before but oh well, I love her truck loads!
She was one of my favorite people when I was going through my Wilton courses next to all my amazing course mates!

I fondly recall one day when I arrived a little early for class and Nina was sitting behind the register with six naked cupcakes and she called out to me to help her ice them because she said she couldn't and with just a glance I told her the icing was a little too stiff so I added a little bit of water in and we iced them together, happily yakking away.

I was also invited by the owner of Amore E Bake to teach at her place in Seremban so my next project would be planning out my classes and there's also my book!

It seems as though things are finally falling in place, funny how life is this really weird roller coaster ride of ups and downs.

Karen Cuppy Cake is back, baybeh.

Oh yes, and I won first place, gave a speech and didn't cry this time.